Sea surface oil spills do not spread uniformly, nor without limit. Thick regions having a thickness of a millimeter or more are formed, which contain the majority of the oil. Reliable detection of oil thickness is of major importance. A knowledge of the oil distribution, and the location of those regions containing the heaviest concentration of oil, would enable the most effective confinement, control and clean-up of the oil.
Multifrequency microwave radiometry has heretofore been employed as a technique for determining oil thicknesses greater than about 1 mm. ("The Determination of Oil Slick Thickness by Means of Multifrequency Passive Microwave Techniques" James P Hollinger, NRL Memorandum Report 2953, June 1974.) This technique is based upon the fact that the apparent microwave brightness temperature is different in the region of the oil slick than in the adjacent unpolluted sea by an amount which depends upon the slick thickness. The oil slick acts as an electromagnetic matching layer between free space and the sea, modulating the brightness temperature of the sea. As the thickness of the oil slick is increased, the apparent microwave brightness temperature at first increases and then passes through alternating maxima and minima, due to the standing wave pattern set up in the film. The adjacent maxima and minima are separated by integral multiples of a quarter of the electromagnetic wavelength in the oil.
Heretofore, the use of microwave radiometry for oil slick thickness measurement has been hindered by several drawbacks in the technology. Chief among these difficulties are the inability to achieve thickness resolution below about 1 mm and the inability to unambiguously measure oil slicks containing a range of thicknesses.
A need exists, therefore, for an improved microwave radiometer capable of achieving better thickness resolution and having the ability to discriminate unambiguously different thicknesses of oil contained within a given radiometric antenna pattern.